


Idly towards eternity

by EvaBelmort



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Oh look I wrote something morbid again, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Pretty immediately post-fall actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 10:52:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8141200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvaBelmort/pseuds/EvaBelmort
Summary: A conversation on a beach, after the fall.





	

Two bodies lay in a tangle of limbs on the sand, placed there by the gradually rising tide. A wave lapped at them, then another. The next wave was larger and provoked movement, one of the men convulsing and retching and dragging itself upright, dislodging the other, which flopped limply to the beach. The upright figure pushed its tangled hair out of its eyes with its working arm, and grabbed the other figure, dragging it further up the beach away from the tide, and then kneeling beside it to check for a pulse. After a moment it sagged, shoulders bowed with its hand resting limply on the other figure’s chest, then tipped its head back and started to laugh. The noise echoed around the small cove, hoarse and ragged and sounding less like laughter the longer it went on.

As if summoned by the sound, a third figure detached itself from the shadow of the cliffs and stalked towards them, stopping several feet away.

“Hello, Chiyoh,” Will said, chest still hitching unevenly. He tilted his face towards her and gave something approximating a smile.

She didn’t reply, staring at Hannibal where he was lying sprawled half in Will’s lap. One side of his head was a crushed and bloody ruin where he must have struck a rock on the way down, and he was quite clearly dead.

“Did you mean to save him?” Will asked. His face was torn too, the gash from Francis Dolarhyde’s knife bubbling with blood every time he spoke. 

“Did you mean to kill him?” Chiyoh shot back, abrupt and pained.

“After all the effort I put into making him let me? Of course I did.”

“ _Let_ you?” Chiyoh queried, frowning.

“It’s so easy for him," Will sighed. "And for you. Point the gun, pull the trigger, doesn’t matter who you’re aiming at. I can’t kill people unless, on some level, they want me to. It’s why I quit the police, after my inability to shoot people got me stabbed; I was a liability.” He hiccupped another laugh, raw and bitter. “With my ridiculous brain, they don't even have to open their mouths to tell me their wretched sob stories. And Hannibal thinks it's ‘inconvenient’ to feel compassion for just one human out of the entire seething mass...” He trailed off, gaze dragging down to the wreckage of Hannibal’s face. “It’s usually guilt, if they think they deserve it. The unfortunate prickings of the conscience, or at least a level of social awareness. Hannibal doesn’t feel guilt, though, or shame, or even the right kind of regret. All his feelings were neatly displayed behind glass in his memory palace, where he could look without having to touch. But he’d never been in love before. It stole inside like an unfamiliar pathogen; his immune system didn’t recognise it to fight it off. And now look at him, so far gone he let me pull him off a cliff so long as we went together.” He ran his fingertips lightly across Hannibal’s jaw, the gentle touch at odds to the callous tone of his voice.

Chiyoh’s mouth thinned into a line. “I see I was wrong. You know other ways to persuade, but you _prefer_ violence.”

Will swayed a little, smiling that awful smile again. “Violence is external. I don’t have the kind of boundaries you need to use ‘other methods’ and come away unscathed.”

She stared down at him in silence for a long moment. “I could take you with me.”

He nodded sluggishly. “You could smuggle me back to Lithuania, if you wanted. I ruined your last cage; I suppose I owe you a new one, if you missed it that badly.”

There was another long pause, and then she said, “I thought I stayed for Mischa, but it was Hannibal who wanted revenge, and I who refused to allow it, both of us driven by our own feelings and using her as an excuse. If Hannibal accepted this end, then I will not deny it merely because it is not what I would have wished for him. Goodbye, Will Graham.”

“Goodbye, Chiyoh. I wish you luck as you learn to spread your wings.”

She gave him a sharp nod, then turned away and walked back into the shadows, disappearing from sight. 

Will shifted awkwardly until he could lie down and tuck his head under Hannibal’s chin, the undamaged side of his face resting over the corpse’s silent heart. The sand under and around him was stained dark, black under the moonlight, and soon the only motion was the tide creeping slowly up to swallow them once more.

**Author's Note:**

> > **Guildenstern** _(broken)_ : We've travelled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.  
> \--Tom Stoppard, _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_  
> 
> 
> It wasn't really intentional, but this sort of came out feeling like it ought to have stage directions and a fade to black at the end, hence the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern quote for the title.  
> I think Will would appreciate absurdist existentialist theatre way more than he would opera. He could do a really heartbreaking performance of Samuel Beckett's _Act Without Words I_.


End file.
